


Two for Two

by icarus_chained



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Protectiveness, Recovery, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-09
Updated: 2012-09-09
Packaged: 2017-11-13 21:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/508106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tony seemingly accidentally throws Loki in Clint's face in front of Rhodey, Natasha takes him aside in anger to set him straight. It's not quite what she thinks it is, though.</p>
<p>Natasha, Tony, Clint and Rhodey, and the aftermaths of Avengers and IM2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two for Two

**Author's Note:**

> I've been worrying at the concept of this for a while, but it wouldn't coalesce properly. This is ... my best effort -_-;

She chose her moment carefully, waiting until Stark had extricated himself from a hurried conversation with Bruce, and installed himself behind the wet bar to juggle bottles around and surreptitiously watch his handiwork. She wanted this to be close. Visceral.

"Give me one good reason," she said quietly, slipping in beside him behind the bar, "why I shouldn't do something very, very violent to you."

He didn't even flinch. Just went still, a slow roll of readiness flowing over him, his hands barely hesitating over the bowl of lemons. "And hello to you too, Agent Romanov," he murmured, tilting his head sideways to her with a faint grin, for all the flare of real violence that she wasn't really caring to hide from him. "What can I do for you?"

Natasha smiled at him, narrow and edged, and looked pointedly over to the far end of the room. To the low couch area he'd been watching himself, and the two figures leaning drunkenly shoulder to shoulder in a little oasis at the end of it.

"I didn't realise you'd taken an interest in psychiatry," she said, low and venomous, watching Clint refill his glass with that stiff, careful caution that spoke to drunkenness. Or pain. Or both. Beside him, Rhodey reached out to take his with none of Clint's reticence, his mouth twisting with faint, remembered misery.

Tony's face went stiff beneath his casual grin, the smirk still fixed carefully to its surface. The smile stayed smug and casual, but the eyes ... not so much.

"Psychiatry, no," he demurred, waving a casual hand as he turned from her, shrugging like it had nothing much to do with him. "I do try my hand at matchmaking once in a while, though."

The anger surged upwards. This once, just for this, she let it, welcomed up the humming, aching burn as she caught Stark's elbow with a vicious, invisible bite of her fingers on a nerve bundle, smiling tight and vicious as his hand spasmed around the tongs. He bit off a curse, spinning back to face her with angry, wary eyes.

" _Shit_ , Natasha, what ..."

"You threw it in his face," she bit out, watching with savage satisfaction as his face paled a little. "Everything Loki did to him. Everything he was forced to do. You _threw_ it at him ..."

"Yes!" Tony bit out, his free hand snapping up to catch her wrist, trying to pry her clenched hand from his arm. "Yeah, you know what, I did. Like I put the Hulk _right there_ , with Bruce." He glared at her, stiff and angry while her fingers loosened, a little, involuntarily. "The pair of them walk around twitching all the fucking time, waiting for people to remember, for people to stop tiptoeing around and fucking _say_ something. And you know what? I can do that. I can say shit all damn day, no problem. Better than making them have to fucking wait for it."

She glared at him, silent, feeling her mask flicker at the truth of that. Feeling the pain wanting to slip up around the anger, the flinch that wanted to slice through her every time, watching people look at Clint the way ... the way they'd once looked at her. And still did, sometimes.

"Not in front of Rhodes," she managed, at last. Releasing his elbow, watching as he tucked the arm back against his body, muttering faintly as he rubbed at the dents her fingers had left. "You had no right to do in front of Rhodes." 

SHIELD was bad enough. That Loki had forced Clint to damage so much of what had been his home. But to force it beyond that ...

Tony's head came up, dark eyes tight and angry as they met hers head on, and Natasha paused. Stopped, in the face of what she saw there. Pain. As much as in Clint's stiff, careful movements, in the twist of misery in Rhodey's mouth. As much, maybe, as flickered up through her, in the dark spaces threaded through her anger. She saw that pain. Recognised it.

"Why not Rhodey?" Tony asked, softly. His fingers tight around the nascent bruises on his arm. "That's what I figured. Who do I know ... who knows what it's like, to be forced to try and kill the people he loves, just because some asshole with a grudge got the keys to his pilot seat?" His smile flickered out, slippery and grim, while her expression froze in realisation. "Matchmaking, yeah? I thought they'd maybe have a thing or two in common. Enough to have a decent conversation, once I'd pointed that out?"

Natasha closed her eyes. For a second, a breath, while she stepped back a little from him and bumped back into the bar. While her fists unknotted at the realisation, and her anger slipped away, melted back, leaving only soft pain behind.

Tony'd been trying to help. Tactlessly, stupidly, bulling his way ahead with no thought for anyone's safety (his own very much included), no thought for anyone's pain, but he had ... 

He had, genuinely, in his own inimitable Tony Stark fashion, been trying to help. To bridge the gap in front of him, by pure force if necessary. He had been trying to help.

And maybe ... maybe even succeeding.

"They're going to kill you," she said, softly. Opening her eyes to see his tired smile, the pained humour in his eyes. " _I_ was going to kill you. You didn't ... I would have laid you out, if I'd been in range." 

Tactful, Tony Stark was not. He hadn't even twitched, casually introducing them to each other as: "Rhodey, he's my best friend, he got forced to try and kill me once. Just the once, the other times were just me being me. Clint, he's ... well, he's _a_ friend, saving the world together counts as friends, right? He had to try and kill us all too. Not his fault, but you know."

She had meant to kill him. _Honestly_. Behind him, Bruce's face had creased desperately into something between pained amusement and desperate apology. Clint had frozen into stillness, and Rhodey'd looked to be rapidly weighing the pros and cons of murdering his best friend. Leaning more towards _pro_.

"They're going to kill you," she repeated distantly, watching him. "Both of them."

"I know," Tony said, smiling ruefully. "I think Clint gets first dibs. Rhodey did the bow out and apologise for me thing he does, so I'm pretty sure Clint gets first shot, and Rhodey gets to finish up." He glanced down at his elbow, the marks blooming around it, and back at her. "They're gonna be disappointed you got there first, you know."

Natasha smiled, thin and tight. "Best friend's prerogative," she said, low and casual, and he grinned around a flinch. Nodding in careful, pained agreement.

"Yeah," he said, his eyes drifting back to Rhodes for a second. "I got that." He looked back, that faint smile twitching back, real and amused. "You just taking first shot, or did you want to step outside for a minute?"

She tilted her head, letting her smile slip from vicious into soft, distant. Studying his face with careful intensity, well aware of how uncomfortable it made him. Waiting, until he shifted uneasily, drifting back towards worry. Then, and only then.

"No," she mused, letting the corners of her eyes crease, a more real and gentler amusement. A little branch, some small forgiveness. "I think they can handle themselves, don't you?" 

Once they'd sobered up, and calmed down. They could deal with Tony themselves. She looked briefly at them, at the way Clint's shoulders had started to lose their tightness, at the casual and more than a little drunken camaraderie that was starting to become obvious between them. And she thought: maybe by that stage, they'd have realised enough that Tony might even survive. 

"Yeah," Tony agreed, grinning faintly. "Rhodey can be pretty vicious when he wants to be, and he can time his fuses to a tee. Between the pair of them ... I'm pretty sure they'll figure out some way to get me for this one." He shook his head, smiling faintly. "But hey. Totally worth it, yeah?" 

She shook her head, reluctantly amused despite lingering anger, watching as he backed away, grinning faintly and holding his hands up as though to ward her off. As he turned back to whatever cocktail he'd been in the process of brewing up, flexing his elbow with only a faint, resigned wince.

She could have left it there. Left it settled, for her part, let him to reap his rewards from his best friend and hers. She could have. But ... 

Watching him, watching the dark thing in his eyes, the echo of so many pains she'd felt slicked along the sides of her own chest. Looking back to the two figures leaning shoulder to shoulder at the far side of the room, and the soft, startled laugh from Rhodey as Clint murmured something low and probably vicious. Watching the quiet, pained thing in Tony's eyes as he saw them too. Watching all that. 

She thought ... she needed to know.

"Why?" she asked, very softly. Watching his eyes flick back to hers, curiosity and comprehension and rueful resignation. "You barely know Clint. So why?" Why deliberately put himself in the line of fire, to help a man he barely knew, in an area he was barely competent in at the best of times. 

Tony's eyes creased at the edges. The kind of smile she knew sometimes, the one that never touched the mouth at all, tired and rueful. Tony met her eyes, and smiled that smile.

"Partly for Rhodey," he said, keeping his hands carefully busy. "And hey, partly for Clint too. I mean, he's a decent guy, seems like, and it wasn't his fault, so fuck this eggshell crap, you know? But mostly ..." He stopped, staring down into a martini shaker like it held the secrets of the universe. His shoulders hunched faintly, stiff and nervous while she stared at him. "Mostly? Because of you."

She blinked. Stopped, stared, feeling ice and tightness sliver through her stomach. "Me?" she asked, quietly. Remembering Clint's face frozen in pained shock. Debts. So many, between them. "What about me?"

Tony looked up at her, and she wondered, sometimes, if she should catalogue all the variations on that smile, the perpetual mask he wore and all its varying shades, nearer and farther from the truth each time. 

"Well, that's the other thing they have in common, isn't it?" he asked, holding out a glass to her half in distraction, and half to hold her to him as he met her gaze. "You're two for two now, aren't you? Saving best friends from enslavement?"

She stared, accepting the martini with a suddenly numb hand, and he grinned like a blade flickering out, dark and pained and rueful.

"I owe you," Tony told her, carefully. Seriously, with all the weight he only rarely put into the things he said, weight he used like a weapon, timed each time to hit home. "For Rhodey, for getting him back before Vanko forced him ... forced him to do something he wouldn't come back from. I owe you. And you're two for two, and you got Clint back for yourself, but I can at least make fucking sure he's not walking around expecting me to remember to punch him whenever I look at him, when we've _been_ there. When Bruce is the Hulk, and Rhodey almost killed me, and you stabbed me in the neck and then went and saved my best friend." 

He shook his head, the corner of his mouth curling faintly, casual and confident and startlingly sincere, and Natasha just ... stared. While he raised his glass to hers in soft toast, and grinned ruefully.

"I owe you," he repeated. "I owe you my family. Which pretty much means that yours ... yours get a free pass, and all the dubious help a Stark can offer, yeah?"

He held the grin, and her gaze, as he tossed back the toast. She followed, almost purely by instinct, and wondered absently at the sensation of a debt paid in her name ... that fell to the _benefit_ of those she cared about. He tossed back his drink, and smiled pained and knowing at her, while she wondered that.

And for that ...

She smiled at him. Something real, from her mask to his, and raised her empty glass back up to chink once more against his.

"Here's to being two for two," she offered, quietly, a promise as much as an acknowledgement, and met his startled, savage grin with one of her own. 

Two for two, his for hers, hers for his, and maybe they could make it _stay_ that way.

"Yeah," he murmured. Looking across the room to where his Rhodey sat with her Clint, slowly and painfully pulling themselves back together. Looking back to her with a grin that was all teeth. "Yeah, okay. Here's to that, then."

There were some debts, she thought, watching his smile, that didn't hurt to owe.


End file.
